Nov 21, 2012

Thanlyin oil refinery will be the first to be handed over to foreign businessmen, amid the government’s planning to privatise state-owned refineries, petroleum plants, methanol plants and chemical fertilisers plants under the Ministry of Energy, according to sources from the energy planning department.

Thanlyin No.1 oil refinery will be renovated to produce standard oil products with crude oil from overseas. Ministry of Energy will arrange the transfer procedure on December 3 at Nay Pyi Taw.

While before the transfer of the whole factory, the ministry has planned to transfer the machine oil and lubricant oil combined plant under the Thanlyin No.1 refinery to local businessmen, according to sources from Myanmar Petro-Chemical Enterprise.

Currently Myanmar has three refineries, the Thanlyin oil refinery in Yangon region, Chauk oil refinery and Mann Thanpayarkan oil refinery in Magway region. These factories could produce 51,000 barrels per day at first and now they can yield only one-third of the previous output. That’s why the ministry has decided to transfer the factories to local and overseas businessmen to modernise the factories and to increase their output.

The overseas investors are preferred, since local businesses still lack experiences and certain expertise to run the oil refineries in modern ways, said an official from the energy planning department, who asked not to be named.